It never ceases to amaze me where horses take us. Vanessa and I now find ourselves planning for a trail ride along the Welsh countryside in the British Isles.
We’ll be in Great Britain as a guest of Paresh, the London gentleman who we met on our horse safari to India in 2008 (Life’s Lessons from the Trail, “Indian Safari,” November/December ’08 and January/February ’09). Last year, Paresh came to our farm in upstate New York and stayed with us for 12 days. We enjoyed great trail riding and sightseeing.
Paresh will be getting married in London in late May. He’s invited us to the wedding, and his family will be hosting us for our entire two-week stay. To repay our “horse hospitality,” Paresh suggested that we go riding or “hacking” while we’re in Great Britain. That sounded good to us.
‘Park Hacking’
Online, we found dozens of guided hacking services from which to choose. An amazing picture of riding in England started to come into focus.
British riding culture is steeped in tradition. The horse has been a fixture in its society for hundreds of years. The British Horse Society (www.bhs.org.uk) plays a major role in setting riding standards, organizing riding clubs, and advocating for the equine community.
Horses are deeply ingrained in the British urban activities. Buckingham Palace and the pomp of royal activities make horses accepted as part of the urban culture.
Riding in London is called “park hacking” — it’s like renting a horse in New York’s Central Park. In Hyde Park, not far from Paresh’s family shop near Piccadilly Arcade, hacking is available on five miles of groomed trail.
This trail is called “Rotten Row,” which is a corruption of the expression route de roi, meaning King’s Road. The trail leads to the gates of Buckingham Palace.
The 300-year-old Hyde Park Stables (www.hydeparkstables.com) invites riders of all abilities to take a riding lesson or to hack around a serpentine lake on “horses chosen for their temperament.”
On the other side of London, not far from Wimbledon, is the other guided riding service in town. The 100-year-old Wimbledon Village Stables (www.wvstables.com) is a private riding club that also rents horses to the public. Ride for a kilometer, and you’ll access more than 3,000 acres of public parkland.
Hill & Dale
Alas, after researching London’s stables, we removed urban riding from our option list. Paresh had never ridden with either of these stables, and our desire to visit London’s great museums would limit the amount of riding we could fit in.
Deep down, our dream was to ride unescorted in the British countryside. We wanted to have a horse experience as much as a cultural one.
We decided to focus on Wales, the small rural country on England’s western border. The fabulous village-to-village drover herd routes in Wales are legendary. We thought it would be fun to stun our senses riding through the green rolling hills and dales of this picturesque country.
Vanessa and Paresh traded website finds as the investigated several rural riding services. Paresh made phone calls to find out more about the ones that looked promising. Every stable we initially found were escorted or guided hacking services.
Some stables offered only day rides.
A few offered multiday rides where riders stop at pubs for lunch and inns for the night. All offered rides for various skill levels.
Darley Newman of Equitrekking fame (www.equitrekking.com) rode with one service we found, Caeiago Riding Centre. But it, too, was a guided ride and in the mountains far from London.
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We didn’t find any unescorted rides, so we settled on a short list of two escorted rides, one in England and one in Wales. Both stables offered amazing vistas.
Studland Stables (www.studlandstables.com) in Dorset offered rides along a sandy beach at sunset on England’s spectacular south coast. However, Paresh wanted to properly introduce his new wife, Sonal, to the region. We all agreed that we could see more sights in that area traveling by car.
The other service, Trans Wales Trails (www.transwales.demon.co.uk), was located close to the English border, out of Cwmfforest, a beautiful country inn with rider accommodations. It offered guided rides of 8 to 15 miles per day, lunch at a pub, then back to Cwmfforest for the evening.
We liked the rolling terrain, the pub stops, and Cwmfforest. That very easily could’ve been our final choice, but we decided to keep looking for an unguided tour.
Free Rein!
What we really wanted was to find a stable that would lend us horses to care for as our own and provide a map to find our way to each day’s point-to-point destinations. This is the type of independent riding with which we feel most comfortable. Village-to-village riding using a map and a GPS would be an adventure we’d enjoy if we could find one.
But the time came to make a decision. Reservations were due. Our itinerary needed to be finalized. We were ready to sign with a guided hacking service.
Then, at about the same time, Vanessa and Paresh found FreeRein Holidays on Horseback in Wales (www.free-rein.co.uk) and ironically sent the link to each other. One option offered two- to seven-day rides with no guides or escorts.
On the website’s home page, we clicked on the “Unguided” link and answered several ability questions. We gave honest responses and earned the recommendation of an unguided ride.
We then contacted the facility by e-mail and telephone. The owners answered our questions, but again questioned us about our riding experience. They needed to be sure we had the required credentials for point-to-point riding. We did!
Soon, we’ll be hacking around the green Welsh countryside with a friend we met on a horse safari in India. It’s unbelievable.
